Learning to Dance Again

It's always a delight to be back at this wonderful church. Last night, Mark and Val and I were doing a little math, and I think this is actually my 10th anniversary of speaking with you over the summer. 10th anniversary, we should like go for a weekend trip or something. I mean, this is a special weekend. As Mark mentioned, a year and a half ago, I began my new position as president at Princeton Seminary, a position I dearly love, and have thrown myself into, and our whole family is there now, and we've been in it.

And over the years, being with you, I've developed quite a bit of email correspondence. It was last year, several of you have asked, you know what, you still have your faith, and is all that still working out all right at Princeton? And the answer is absolutely yes. I pray more now than ever before. But I thought, kind of like the guy on the airplane who bores you by whipping out his iPhone and showing you photos, I would show you a few photos. This is what the family looks like. This is our Christmas card picture this year. On the left, is it left here too? Yeah, it's-- Our 18-year-old, Carl, who'll be a senior at Princeton High School, and then our daughter, Lindsey, who's now grown, Don, myself, Eric.

As you can see, I have kind of a redhead thing. This is why you have this guy. He's the only other gray-haired guy in the family besides me. His name is Esau, 'cause he's hairy. And if you don't get that, you need to go read your Old Testament this afternoon. This is the quad of our seminary last week. This is, we had so much snow. This is where, this is the chapel on the grounds of the seminaries, is the inside of it. I preach in this chapel every Monday to seminarians, and I gotta tell you how much I love that.

Preaching to Pastor Wannabes is just spectacular, because as Mark was saying, this is part of my calling to work, especially the next generation of pastors. Sometimes we go across the street into the university. This is their chapel. We use there for some of our bigger functions. When I was installed last fall as the president, we had the service here. This place was just packed with people, and it was at a wonderful, wonderful time. One of the reasons why it was so wonderful is that some of your pastoral team was there as well. And so Renee and Mark and Val came, along with Laura and Lori, and so they were all a part of the spectacular time we had.

So the Twin Lakes Church was very much a part of that spectacular moment as we moved into this new position. Oh, this is the photo of our house. No, it's not our house. That's the graduate school, just down the street as well. But we're enjoying being there. We're having a spectacular experience. Do keep us in your prayers. It's an extraordinary, challenging job, extraordinary, I think, important opportunity to help shape this next generation of pastors.

Well, I told Renee I would continue in kind of the theme of light bulb moments, and near the end of the message today, I'll be telling you about one of mine. But we got a running start at that by looking at David's own light bulb moment. Our text comes to us from 2 Samuel 6, reading verses one to 11. We'll learn what it took for David to learn how to dance again. Hear the word of the Lord.

David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, 30,000. David and all the people with him set out and went from Beljuda to bring up from there the Ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of Hosts who was enthroned on the cherubim. They gathered the Ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzzah and Ahayo, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart with the Ark of God. Ahayo went in front of the Ark.

David and all the house of Israel were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. When they came from the threshing floor of naked, Uzzah reached out his hand to the Ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the Ark and he died there beside the Ark of God.

David was angry because the Lord had burst forth with an outburst upon Uzzah. So that place is called Perez-Uzzah to this day. David was afraid of the Lord that day. He said, "How can the Ark of the Lord come into my care?" So David was unwilling to take the Ark of the Lord into his care in the city of David. Instead, David took it to the house of Obed-ed-im, the Gittite, and the Ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-ed-im, the Gittite, three months. And the Lord blessed Obed-ed-im and all his household.

Holy God, we've gathered here to hear your word. No mere mortal words will do. So be gracious, we pray, to our seeking of it, our seeking of a word that can make its way into the most protected and tender corners of our heart. A word that can free us to dance again. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Some of the people in the biblical story and even to this day are people who always seem to be running a little behind God. Moses would be a good example of that. Moses was constantly being surprised by God's next idea and Moses would say to God, "Really? Really, we're really doing this, really?" And the Lord would say, "Yes, you're going to do this." Moses would drag his feet but would get around to doing it. Other people, by contrast, are always running ahead of God. And David is the poster boy for this.

David keeps coming up with ideas and plans that are news to God. And then it's God who keeps saying to David, "Really? You really think you're gonna do this?" Now, in my life sometimes I'm Moses, sometimes I'm David. But let's think today about what happens when we run ahead of God. After David became king, he discovered that the country he had just inherited was severely divided by the long civil wars that he had had with King Saul, the king before him.

And so like any leader of any organization, David was looking for a way to unite the people. Then he came up with this great idea. He says, "What we need is to get a hold of the Ark of the Covenant." Now, as you probably know, the Ark of the Covenant was this extraordinarily beautiful ornate gold box that had cherubim on top of it, and the wings of the cherubim formed a seat. The people received this beautiful ark while they were on the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, and it served as a symbol of the seat of Jehovah, the God who traveled with his people, even when his presence wasn't always apparent.

Well, 30 years prior to our text today, this Ark of the Covenant had been stolen by the Philistines in a battle. But then when the Philistines got a hold of the ark, they had so many problems. Everything just went bad for them, one thing after another, and they realized it was because they had taken the Lord's ark. It's kinda like, remember in that movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazis finally got their hands on the Ark of the Covenant, everything goes badly for them? That was the Philistines' experience as well.

So they dumped the Ark of the Covenant at the home of a guy named Abinadab. And so Abinadab's had this ark now for 30 years. David's plan was to go to Abinadab's house and get the ark back and bring it to Jerusalem, because this would be exactly what they needed. It would unite the people, it would inspire them, all the different factions would come together around this beautiful symbol of their heritage and their tradition, the God who was with them.

And David had just established Jerusalem as his new capital. At this point, it was a political capital. But if he brought the ark there to Jerusalem, it would be a religious capital as well, and it would further unite his power and his leadership over the people. I imagine David just giggling to himself as to how good an idea this was on so many levels. This was gonna work out fine. This would be a great, great new leadership idea.

However, we have no record of David ever talking to God about this idea. Why bother praying in order to get what you want with just a little hard work? David would have made a great Protestant. Just go make it happen. That was his strategy here. Just go make it happen. So he pulls together some of his soldiers, 30,000, and they go to Abinadab's house. David knocks on the door and asks if he can have the Ark of the Covenant. Abinadab sees 30,000 soldiers on his front lawn and says, "Yeah, okay. Why don't you take it?"

They were told that David put the Ark of the Covenant on a new ox cart. That was nice, it was at least a new ox cart. David's invested in this idea. Abinadab not only gives him the Ark, but he gives him two of his sons, Ahio and Uzzah, to help make sure the Ark gets back to Jerusalem safely. Well, then they start down the road, and 30,000 strong, this parade begins down the road towards Jerusalem, and David is at the front of this parade dancing because he's so excited. This is my best idea ever. This is gonna be great. I bet even God's gonna like this idea. This is gonna be fantastic.

And the people behind him are making merry as well with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets, I didn't even know the Hebrews had castanets. But this is a big moment. Everything's going great. Until the stupid ox stumbles. Then Uzzah, who's walking apparently next to the cart, just in case something like this happens, careful, careful Uzzah, puts his hands up and grabs hold of the Ark to steady it. It's at this point that God enters the narrative, and he's so angry at both Uzzah and David that he just strikes Uzzah dead on the spot.

You don't reach out and grab ahold of holiness. David sees what has happened. And then David becomes angry and sullen. This has put a definite damper on the parade. So David says, "Take God's precious chair and put it over there at that guy's house." Just whoever just happened to be there. And it was the house of a man named Obed-ed-em. So David leaves the holy Ark of the Covenant at Obed-ed-em's house, and then he sulks his way back home to Jerusalem, no more dancing.

Now what went wrong? For one thing, they weren't carrying the Ark of the Covenant properly. When God gave the people this Ark of the Covenant, he made it clear that there's no grabbing after his holiness. So you're not supposed to carry it on an ox cart. It's supposed to be carried on the back of the priest of the people. And even the priests weren't allowed to touch it. This is the symbol of holy, holy, holy. You don't grab holiness, holiness grabs you.

So the priests carried the Ark by pulling it, long poles through the gold rings on the side of it, and they held the poles in order to carry it from place to place. All as an act of honoring the holiness of God. When the Philistines captured the Ark, as I mentioned earlier, they lugged it around on an ox cart, and that totally didn't work for them either. Carrying God around on an ox cart is always a bad idea.

Now did God strike Uzzah dead simply because David did not fulfill the letter of the law? I don't think so. David was never good at the letter of the law. One of the times when he was on the run from King Saul during that period of civil war, he got a little hungry, so he goes into the temple, he tells the priests he's got a whole lot of men, and he needs to have the holy bread so he can feed them. This is wrong on so many levels. You don't just gobble down holy bread. And he didn't have any men at this point, he was on his own.

But David took all the bread, and then goes outside on his own, he just gobbles down, it's like gobbling down all the communion bread, it's just because you happen to be hungry. Another time when he was on the run from Saul, he decided to hide out with the Philistines. They're arch enemies. And don't even get me started on all the mistakes and failures and sins committed by David in his marital and moral life. But still, God stays with David through all of his many, many failures. That's because God and David were connected by the heart, not the law.

But the Lord himself said, "David is a man after my own heart." That sticks, that's David's great, great summary of his life, even the New Testament refers to him as a man after God's heart. And this is exactly why God was so offended by what David has done, it's the heart of David that's bothering him right now. A heart that would try to go out and grab for God because he's found a use for God. Sticking God on an ox cart, dragging him behind his own agendas.

Maybe you know that temptation, I know I certainly do. You've got some agenda that you need to do at work and you're just, you're heading off for it and you're just dragging God along behind you assuming that God's gonna be very impressed with us. Or some agenda that you have in your family. Or some agenda you have for the church. And rather than waiting upon the Lord to reveal his own agendas, you just take off because you've got your own little strategic plan going and you're just trying to drag God along behind, thinking that he's just behind you as you come up with the next idea doing this, you know, you're blessed, you are blessed. And God has his own own agendas.

And notice that even though David is the one who orchestrated this whole idea, David's the one who had this whole plan that offended God so much, it's Uzzah who gets hurt by it. And in our bravest moments when we think about our great campaigns, if we looked hard enough around us, we would find somebody that got hurt along the way. Maybe it was a family member that you didn't spend time with because you were so busy with your campaign of success at work. Maybe it was somebody at work you had to walk over to get the job that you wanted. There's always somebody who's paying the cost for our campaigns like the one David has here.

Well, this is the reason why David is known as a man after God's own heart. He has failed, he's hurt others, which he did by the way often, sometimes much worse even than this. He's been sulking in Jerusalem for three months about his failure, about his anger and frustration with God. And then someone comes into the palace and says to David, you know, after you dumped the Ark of the Covenant at the home of Obed-ed-em, he has had his socks blessed off of him day after day for the last three months. David, I imagine him smiling and saying, oh man, it's time to get over it. It's time to just get over it.

So David gets over his anger at God. He gets over his guilt for what happened to Uzzah. He gets over his guilt for not getting this thing right. He goes back to Obed-ed-em's house, takes the Ark. This time he carries it properly. It's carried on the backs of others. And he brings it back to Jerusalem. He's so excited about being renewed in his relationship with the Lord, but being renewed and now humbly bringing the Lord's presence into his town, that he starts to dance once again.

But he doesn't actually make it, the text says, six steps until he stops everything. He says, wait, wait, wait, there's something I have to do. He gets an ox and he slays the ox and he sacrifices it to God as a symbol of sacrificing his own stubborn ox-like determination to get what he wants. And giving up that, now David can truly dance again. He's restored in the joy of the Lord. He dances his way all the way into Jerusalem in front of the Lord's Ark.

Maybe you know something about the need to do this as well. I know I've had one experience of this after another, after another, of learning what it means to get over it. A couple of years ago when I was here, I shared with you the story of something that happened early in my life when I was 16 years old. My mother left our family and my father was a pastor, was so shamed by what happened and what happened to him and what, you know, his own responsibilities and all of this. And then the church fired him and after that happened, my dad got in a car and drove away and we didn't see him again.

And since I was only 16, my older brother dropped out of college, got a construction job to help me finish high school. Last time I talked with you about this, I shared how all the scripture I had learned as a child really saved my life during those days. Great, great, wonderful biblical text about God's faithfulness who gets us through. That's absolutely true, but the story did continue on. And the continuing part of the story is that I lived for years and years and years with resentment over what had happened to me.

And the experience of losing both my parents and especially my dad, eventually we were reconnected with my mom, but this lost dad who just took off, he was just gone, took me a long time to get over it. I poisoned relationships with supervisors and teachers because I was looking for a father figure when they were just hoping to be a supervisor or a teacher. And I also sabotaged many interpersonal relationships because I had major abandonment issues. And I just knew it was only a matter of time before these people would leave too and so I would leave first just to get it over with.

And it was getting in the way of healthy living because I was still like David, just kind of sulking over what did not work in terms of the first plan. My plan was to grow up in this wonderful Christian home and everything would be wonderful. That was the plan. How did that not work out? I went through therapy for quite a while. It was extremely helpful, but it wasn't the way I completely got over it. The great thing about therapy, I'm a major advocate of therapy. I refer people to therapists all the time.

What therapy helped me did was it helped me understood that I had abandonment issues and resentment issues, but that didn't really necessarily free me from them. I just knew I was messed up now. And I was in small groups and working with other people and friends who would talk me through some of these things. I prayed about the issue 'cause I knew it was my issue. I kept waiting for some kind of mystical moment. I would see like letters in the sky, get over it. Or I thought I had maybe some major cathartic breakdown moment where I would become furious and break all the furniture in my living room and then break down into tears and then wake up the next morning and think, hey, I'm over it. That didn't happen either.

What did happen was I just got tired of all that stuff I was carrying around. And ever so subtly, I just dropped it. It was weighing my life down. I just stopped carrying around all that weight. Or to mix the metaphor, it felt like I had this ox that was just dragging around with me all the time, everywhere I went and just stunk up every place I went to this big old ochre's crag and this big ox of resentment and anger and frustration and victimization. Yeah, this is my ox, this is me. I can't get rid of this guy. Time just came to let it go.

I knew I'd reach that moment when the church that I was serving as a pastor has this tradition of someone providing flowers on Sundays. I think it's maybe an East Coast thing. We had these big thing of flowers every Sunday and different people would offer to present the flowers and pay for them. And you could always have the thing in the bulletin. And then we did a big time thing on Easter with lilies and poinsettias at Christmas. I knew I'd gotten over it when I found one time myself thinking I want to provide the flowers Sunday. And I provided them with the note in honor of my father.

And I got to the point then of realizing my dad wasn't all demon, none of us are. Certainly wasn't all saint either, none of us are. So I started recovering all these wonderful stories in my memory about fabulous things that he had done. I don't know what got ahold of him, maybe even some type of mental illness that would make you just take off like that and abandon people who love you forever. But I didn't have to care about that. I didn't have to analyze it anymore.

I remember that there were good things about him and I could still honor him as the 10 Commandments require us to do. I could honor him. 30 years later after my dad took off, my brother and I received word that he had passed away. And he died in a very unimpressive little trailer park in Florida, but he was living in a camping trailer in this trailer park when he died. So my brother and I went to Florida. We buried my dad, very humble graveside service. And then we went to his trailer and just to kind of walk around and see what was his life, what we could find out about his life for over 30 years of missing him.

We found his Bible and we were delighted to know that he continued to live out of the word. We found that right underneath the Bible was a notebook that my dad kept that he would journal in. And so we read quite a bit of his journal articles and learned about some of the torments of the shame that he continued to live with. My dad never got over it. And this is the end of his life. But the best part of the notebook was the page near the very beginning that said daily prayer list. And on this list of people that he prayed for every day, the first name was my brother's. And the second name was mine.

And there was just enough grace at the end to know that he had never really forgotten us. And that was all I needed, again, to just get back at it. The light bulb moment in my life came before even finding that notebook though. The light bulb moment came when I knew I had to just let it go. Like David in Jerusalem, I was missing out on all of the blessings. David discovered, oh my dad was having all the blessings, he wasn't getting any. David wanted to be blessed again. So he got over it. And there was this aha.

And every one of us has these opportunities to realize if you want to, you can get over it. You can slay the ox, you can sacrifice that thing. You don't have to keep dragging it around. Maybe you were hurt badly by somebody who made a promise to you. Somebody you counted on. And that person broke that vow. And the hurt has stayed with you for a long, long time. Or maybe you had a great dream for how your life was supposed to turn out. And you worked hard for that dream. You went to schools for it. You got educated. You threw yourself into this. You made other sacrifices. And that dream has crashed upon the rocks of reality. And it's not gonna be a dream come true. And you still can't get over that.

Or you lost a job. And the way you lost it just wasn't fair. And it's been a long, long time. And you're missing out on all the blessings because you've lost your ability to dance. You have no interest in the dance of life. Or in the higher tones of music. All you can think about is what happened to you. You've allowed this to take over your identity. You have befriended this awful hurt. It's become the thing you trust the most and know about better than anything else. It doesn't have to be that way. And it's just getting in the way of every blessing God's trying to give you.

You know, if you're still damaged by a prior relationship that you haven't gotten over, maybe finally you get another date. And so you're at the restaurant having this date and it's not going well because the person on the other side of the table can just smell something wrong here. What are they smelling? That big ugly ox you dragged into the restaurant. 'Cause all you wanna talk about is the last person you were with and how horrible that person was. Or you're in an interview and the interview isn't going very well either because all you can do in this interview is talk about how unjust it was that you were let go at the last place you worked.

And the guy who's talking to you during the interview just wants to fold up his file and say, you need to get you and your big ugly ox out of here. Or you had a bad experience in one church. So you come to a new church but you haven't gotten over it. You drag that big ol' ox right down the aisle here. It makes it hard for people to see. We can't see Jesus, well your ox is in the way.

Jesus died on the cross to forgive. To forgive means to free, it's almost the same word. In his death on the cross, he frees you from the guilt over the things that you've done and left undone that you cannot believe you've done. You're freed from that now. He's freed you from the guilt of others who've hurt you. You're free from that. You can just let go of the ox and you're never gonna be able to dance again until you do. You're never gonna be able to recover the joy and the blessings that after the cross are now waiting for you. But you cannot dance with an ox.

Holy God, we ask that you will give us the freedom to accept all that Christ has done for us in the cross, all of the forgiveness and the grace that has abound. Allow us now to walk in this extraordinary grace of new life. We ask it in his name, amen.